Democrats involved in the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation of CIA interrogation techniques have found a way to avoid partisan fights: Keep working after the ranking Republican quits.

Late last month, Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) abruptly withdrew from the probe to protest Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to appoint a special prosecutor to review the legality of Bush-era interrogation techniques. Bond’s departure means that Republican staffers aren’t playing much of a role in the investigation, either. And that suits several Democrats on the panel just fine.

“It expedites things,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). “There was a lot of staff-level argument, and it tends to be over the party divide. And I think without that constant argument, we’ll be able to move forward more rapidly and do just as good of a report.”

Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said Bond’s decision to not participate “sort of helps” the panel’s investigation “because everybody knows there is too much partisanship on that committee, and I don’t think we caused it.”

Rockefeller, who chaired the Intelligence Committee in the previous Congress, added: “Everybody knows it’s a very important subject; now they’ll have a free hand to go at it. ... I’ve been through this process [and] we don’t do it unfairly.”

“It’s more of a public perception issue,” Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, another Democrat on the committee, said of Bond’s decision to pull out. “As long as the inquiry is objective, straightforward, it will have legitimacy and speak for itself. And no members will support it if it looks like it’s a partisan witch hunt.”

Last March, Bond and Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) agreed to conduct a review that would look at how the CIA created and operated its detention and interrogation program, how the CIA determined that detainees were aware of relevant intelligence, whether the CIA was being truthful in its description of the program to Congress and what kind of intelligence was gleaned through the tough interrogation tactics.

But Holder’s appointment of the special prosecutor, differences over the scope of the committee’s review and worries about how it would deal with witnesses targeted by the Justice Department seem to have torpedoed hopes that the panel’s findings would be bipartisan.

“I think it was a lot of argument over what was in the content of the report,” Whitehouse said of disputes between the GOP and Democratic Intelligence Committee staff over the review. “If every sentence is a negotiation, you get sentences out slowly.”

Bond acknowledged there’s been disagreement on the staff level, but he downplayed its significance, saying “staffs always look at things differently.” A spokeswoman said staff problems were not a “contributing factor” to Bond’s decision to withdraw from the review.

Still, his decision is a sign that partisan tensions over intelligence matters are as raw as ever — after the Democrats and the GOP engaged in fierce battles over intelligence leading up to the Iraq war and, more recently, over whether Democrats were aware of Bush-era interrogation tactics such as waterboarding.

Once Democrats issue a final report on the interrogation tactics, Republicans could seek to delegitimize it by pointing out that it was a Democratic-only review.

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat on the panel, acknowledged that “intelligence work is most credible in a bipartisan manner.” He said he hopes to persuade Bond to rejoin the inquiry.

Wyden’s statement reflects the dilemma that has dogged Democrats repeatedly this year: Go it alone and risk attacks from Republicans, or attempt to compromise with the GOP and risk seeing an initiative bogged down amid partisan warfare.

Bond, a combative fourth-term senator who retires at the end of next year, said the Democrats are playing politics by going after actions taken by a Republican White House — and he warned that such inquiries will only tie the hands of CIA officers on the ground.

Bond said Holder’s decision to appoint a special prosecutor came “from the far left wing of the Democratic Party” and would make it “impossible” for the Intelligence Committee to conduct a review because current and former CIA officers involved in the interrogation program would refuse to incriminate themselves before his panel.

“Any competent lawyer would have to tell his client — a CIA agent or somebody with knowledge about it — that you do not answer questions unless you are granted immunity,” Bond said. “I do not believe that our participation in the room is worthwhile as long as Holder has put everybody under the threat of criminal prosecution.”

Feinstein said in an interview that she’s not sold on granting immunity to potential witnesses, saying it “depends on who” is coming before the panel. She also said she’s keeping open the option of subpoenaing witnesses — something that Bond said he would do battle to stop.

“I’ve tried — and everything I know how to do — to bring the two sides together,” Feinstein said. “And we’ve had a lot of luck doing it, and I want to keep it as bipartisan as possible. I did not withdraw. He withdrew. So that’s up to him — and that’s up to the Republicans. But the opportunity is there to participate.”

Bond said he will exercise committee rules to ensure his staff gets access to the same information as the majority staff and that he will still closely follow what the Democrats do, even if it is from afar.

“We’re going to watch what’s done in the Intelligence Committee,” Bond said. “We will participate, but we have pressing problems in Afghanistan, Iran, other hot spots around the world, in cybersecurity, in overhead. I have a tremendous amount of work I need my people to be doing. If [Democrats] were to interview anybody, we’d sit down, and we’d review all the documents that come back.”

With Bond not formally participating in the review, some on the left have expressed hope that the Intelligence Committee would broaden its review to target the creation of the Bush policies that led to the CIA’s interrogation programs.

But Feinstein said she has no plans to change its scope — and noted that the Justice Department and Intelligence Committee investigators have not butted heads so far.

“I think what we’re doing is really important,” Feinstein said. “And we are moving right along.”